Characteristics and land use of contaminated brownfield properties in voluntary cleanup agreement programs

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 551–559 www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Characteristics and land use of contaminated brownfield properties in voluntary cleanup agreement programs G.W. Pagea,, R.S. Bergerb a

Department of Urban and Regional Planning, State University of New York at Buffalo, Hayes Hall, 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214 3087, USA b School of Law, 518 O’Brian Hall, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, USA Received 28 July 2004; received in revised form 4 July 2005; accepted 1 August 2005

Abstract This paper reports exploratory empirical research on the property characteristics and land use of contaminated brownfield properties. This research investigated 1415 contaminated brownfield properties in environmental cleanup programs in the states of New York and Texas in the US. This research attempts to clarify some confusion about contaminated brownfield sites, provide detailed information on the diverse land uses that caused the contamination on these properties, and to provide a better base of knowledge about brownfield sites that may be used in developing and implementing policy to remediate and redevelop contaminated brownfields properties in both older industrial regions and in more recently industrialized regions. This research analyzed land use data for these properties at the time they became contaminated and at the time they entered the environmental cleanup program. It also attempts to identify similarities and differences in the characteristics of the properties in these two states with strikingly different histories of industrialization. Several common assumptions about brownfield properties are extracted from the literature review and tested using the data. Some of our results are surprising, including the variety of past land uses of these contaminated brownfield properties and the differences in the history of land use and the characteristics of the properties in the older versus newer industrial region. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Brownfield; Contaminated land; Land use; Environmental cleanup

Introduction Countries around the world have problems with contaminated brownfield sites. Most of our knowledge of brownfield sites comes from involvement with a small number of specific sites or from reading reports that analyze brownfield sites based on a case study research design. There has been little empirical research on contaminated brownfield properties because data on these properties and any remediation are difficult to obtain. One of the few empirical studies of contaminated brownfield properties in the USA studied 312 sites in Illinois to investigate outcomes and liability waivers, but most research on this topic has used case studies (Winson– Geidman et al., 2004). Tel.:+1 716 829 2133; fax:+1 716 829 3256.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G.W. Page), [email protected] (R.S. Berger). 0264-8377/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2005.08.003

This article reports research that analyzed data on 1415 contaminated brownfield sites that were part of two state’s programs for investigating and remediating brownfields. This research attempts to clarify some confusion about contaminated brownfield sites, provide detailed information on the diverse causes of the contamination on these sites, and to provide a better base of knowledge about brownfield sites that may be used in developing and implementing policy to remediate and redevelop contaminated brownfields properties. While this research was conducted in the USA, we believe that the findings about regional differences and the implications for policy are important for both developed and developing countries. Because many different professionals are involved with brownfield problems, there are many definitions of brownfield properties. In the USA, the most generally used definition is that contained in the 2002 federal Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (Pub. L. No. 107–118), ‘‘The term ‘brownfield site’

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means real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.’’ An international study of these diverse definitions proposed the following as a comprehensive definition: ‘‘A brownfield site is any land or premises which has previously been used or developed and is not currently fully in use, although it may be partially occupied or utilized. It may also be vacant, derelict or contaminated. Therefore a brownfield site is not available for immediate use without intervention’’ (Alker et al., 2000). The necessity to deal with often complex environmental, economic, legal, social, and land use issues for a given property may explain why brownfield problems are not easily resolved. Some brownfield sites are put back into productive use with relative ease if they are found to not be contaminated, can be cost-effectively remediated, or have locational advantages. Little progress is made dealing with the large numbers of brownfield sites, especially those with contamination that lack outstanding locational advantages. This paper reports research on brownfield sites in the US that had sufficient contamination to require formal investigation or remediation before redevelopment. We first review some of the literature that provides examples of some common assumptions about brownfield sites. We then present our data that includes information on the size and location of brownfield sites, which enter into these Voluntary Cleanup Agreement (VCA) programs and the past and present land uses that resulted in these contaminated brownfield sites. We then describe our approach to test the common assumptions found in the literature and we present the results of our analyses. Some of our results are surprising, including the variety of past land uses of these brownfield properties and differences in older versus newer industrial regions. We finish with some conclusions based on our empirical approach to studying contaminated brownfield sites. Literature review Most of what we know about the characteristics of contaminated brownfield properties in the USA comes from research using case study designs. There have been many case studies describing some of the characteristics of the contaminated properties, which include the history of the property, location, the contamination, liability concerns, costs of remediation, and the incentives used to promote the remediation and redevelopment of the property (Page and Rabinowitz, 1994; Pepper, 1997; Bartsch et al., 1997; Coffin and Shepherd, 1998; Collins and Savage, 1998; De Sousa, 2000). There has been some survey research on brownfields, but generally it was conducted to investigate brownfield problems rather than brownfield properties and land uses. An extensive survey of international developers examined their attitudes on the types of incentives which are part of

the voluntary cleanup programs in the USA (Alberini et al., 2003). The study implies that these elements are relevant to brownfield redevelopment throughout the world. This review of the literature describes the assumed causes of the contaminated sites and presents some examples of common assumptions about brownfield sites that we think have not been sufficiently tested. We present widely held assumptions by reporting quotes from well-respected researchers. We do not suggest that these are the original sources of these widely held assumptions. We present these quotes to document that these assumptions are widely held. Studies from both North America and Europe report that one of the most common assumptions about brownfield sites is that they are overwhelmingly the result of past industrial land uses. ‘‘The problem of brownfields is the result of two concurrent factors: the downsizing and plant closings that started in the 1970s as the US and Western Europe experienced a structural change of their economies away from manufacturing, and the passage of environmental legislation holding specified parties liable for the cost of cleanup at contaminated sites’’ (Alberini et al., 2003). ‘‘In cities throughout North America and Europe, the legacy of a negligent industrial past has left its scars on the urban landscape in the form of countless underused or abandoned industrial and commercial properties, commonly referred to as ‘brownfield’ sites’’(De Sousa, 2000). A study of articles about brownfields published in electronic newspapers and journals in the USA for the years 2000–2002 reports that 70 percent of brownfield sites reported in the media had former industrial uses and only between three and eight percent were formerly commercial uses (XL Capital, 2002). Some authors define brownfields as ‘‘used industrial land with real or potential problems of environmental contamination’’ (Schwab, 1997). Another common assumption is that contaminated brownfield sites are most prevalent and present the greatest problems in older industrial regions. For many, discussion of contaminated brownfield sites brings to mind images of the Ruhr Valley in Germany, the Midlands of England, or other regions with a long industrial history. Older industrial regions around the world contain many brownfield sites because, ‘‘Thousands of factories, mills, and machine shops that once housed thriving enterprises lie abandoned, the legacy of technological progress and the changing international marketplace’’ (Bartsch and Munson, 1994). ‘‘The notion of a brownfield brings to mind sites littered with the remains of past industrial activity: crumbling buildings, frozen machinery, and railroad tracks overgrown with weeds’’ (Gorman, 2003). In addition to being located in older industrial regions, brownfield sites are commonly assumed to be an urban problem. ‘‘The history of industrialization and urbanization is closely connected with the nation’s central cities and has left them a legacy of environmentally contaminated sites’’ (Leigh and Coffin, 2000). ‘‘There are hundreds of

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thousands of brownfields in the US, mostly located in former industrial districts in cities, but many also found in older suburbs and small towns’’ (Greenberg et al., 2001). Simons (1998) estimated that 5–10 percent of the urban land in the USA is brownfields and that the percentage in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest (Rustbelt) states is much higher. The last common assumption that we will discuss concerns the history of the pollution events that produced the contaminated brownfield sites. Many of the former industrial sites that are now contaminated brownfield sites experienced their peak levels of production in the decades before modern environmental laws were established to control the release or disposal of toxic inputs and byproducts of industrial activities. ‘‘Because knowledge about environmental contamination associated with industrialization was lacking in the early decades of industrialization, those who prospered from previous urban economic growth did so at the expense of those who subsequently inhabited central cities’’ (Leigh and Coffin, 2000). In the USA, The Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1978 and the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980 put in place the beginnings of a powerful command and control regulatory scheme to protect against the creation of new contaminated land. The common assumption is that the contaminated brownfield sites of the USA of today are a result of pollution events that occurred before this legislation was enacted. The literature does not suggest that there are clear common assumptions about the size of brownfield properties. Indeed, what little is known appears contradictory. Certainly it is generally recognized that there are small brownfield properties, which had been used by dry cleaners and gasoline service stations, and large brownfield properties, which had been manufacturing complexes; however, there is little knowledge of the central tendency of the size distribution. In one study of 107 projects, 75 percent of the parcels were 10 acres or smaller, with an average size of 13.7 acres and a median size of 4 acres (Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED), 1999). The most comprehensive published source of information about the size of brownfield properties comes from a study of articles about brownfields published in electronic newspapers and journals in the USA for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 (XL Capital, 2002). The analysis of property size of the brownfield properties in this source may suggest potential bias toward properties with greater news interest, which these reports clearly acknowledge. The analysis of all 3 years of brownfield properties in the media reports reveals an average property size of 648 acres with a median property size of 41 acres (XL Capital, 2002). It is likely that small brownfield properties, like former gasoline stations or dry cleaners, are not well represented in this data because they do not receive as much media attention as large properties with greater potential for economic impact after redevelopment.

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Data We analyze data sets from New York State (NYS) and Texas containing information about contaminated brownfield properties that entered state-run VCA programs designed to investigate and remediate the contamination and to redevelop the property. Properties in our data may have either completed remediation or may still be involved in the process of the cleanup program. VCA programs are used to clean up properties that have a wide range of toxic substances contamination, but levels of contamination that generally are not sufficient to qualify for remediation under the federal Superfund program. At least 47 states and the District of Columbia have established VCA programs to contend with the environmental problem of contaminated land (Edwards, 2003). VCA programs have become the most important program to solve brownfield problems. Similar policies to cleanup and redevelop contaminated brownfield sites are used in several European countries (Page, 1997; Alberini et al., 2003). While we believe that VCA program properties provide the best empirical data on brownfield properties, we emphasize that they are only a subset of the universe of brownfield properties and analysis of them cannot be used to generalize to all brownfield properties. VCA programs use incentives to induce the ‘‘polluter’’ or someone interested in redeveloping the property to voluntarily remediate the contamination in exchange for waivers of future liability and other benefits. VCA programs use variable cleanup standards linked to intended future land use. Variable cleanup standards are designed to leave residual contamination on the site that is safe for the level of intended land use of the property. The logic of variable cleanup standards is that if the future land use of a contaminated site is a parking lot or a warehouse, the extent of cleanup need not be as complete and the residual contamination at the site may be greater than if the future use of the site will be residential. Some form of institutional control over the future land use of the property must be put in place when variable cleanup standards are used (US Environmental Protection Agency, 1995). The institutional controls must keep uses of the property in the future appropriate for the residual contamination levels of the property to prevent adverse health effects (Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials (ASTSWMO), 1997; Gaspar and Van Burik, 1998; Environmental Law Institute, 1999). The data for NYS contains information on the 240 distinct properties included in the 202 voluntary cleanup agreements signed by the NYS Department of Conservation between the start of the program in 1994 and 31 March 2001. The authors created this dataset by reading each of the agreements and extracting the data of interest to this study from the available information. The data for Texas contains information on the 1175 distinct properties included in the 1375 VCA applications received by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission between the start of the program in 1995 and

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June 2002. We downloaded this data from the Texas VCA Database (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, 2003). These data are neither universe data of all contaminated brownfield properties, nor a randomly drawn sample. While they are a complete set of properties in each state’s VCA program, they are certainly not all the known contaminated brownfield sites in each state, and they may represent only a small fraction of the unknown universe of contaminated brownfield sites. They do not include properties that have been subject to each state’s regulatory enforcement (mini-superfund) program. They do not include properties that have been ‘‘mothballed’’, meaning that the owner knows the property is contaminated and decides to neither remediate the contamination nor sell the property. The properties in these state cleanup programs are influenced by local demand for real estate and the efforts of economic development professionals. Variations in the VCA programs in these two states and their implementation can influence which properties enter these programs and which do not. These differences may explain the disparity in the number of the properties in the VCA programs of the two states. We do not believe this difference is the result of greater contamination in Texas. Reviewing the number of federal Superfund sites in each state supports the opposite assumption about contaminated land in these two states (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2004). Far from a random sample, volunteers elected to enter these properties into the environmental cleanup program, most often because the property has economic redevelopment potential or because of state pressure to remediate the contamination. The owners of some properties may remediate the contamination and redevelop the site without involvement in the state VCA program. There may be more industrial properties in upstate New York that are not in the state’s VCA program because of lower demand for development than in a faster growing state like Texas. Despite the fact that these data cannot tell us about all brownfield sites, these data have much to tell us about the contaminated brownfield sites that are remediated and redeveloped. Property characteristics include the size and location of the properties, and past and present land uses of the properties. Past land use refers to the land use at the time the contamination occurred. Present land use refers to the land use of the property at the time it entered the VCA program, which was before remediation took place. These variables and the number of cases with useable information in each data set are presented in Table 1. The information on the properties in both datasets lacks some information that would be useful. It is mostly counts data, and there are missing values for some variables. Research methods Our intent is to discover what we can learn about the contaminated brownfield properties that entered the VCA

Table 1 Number of observations for different variables of VCA brownfield sites

Properties Location of property Size of property Past land usea Present land use

New York State (Rustbelt)

Texas (Sunbelt)

240 240 117 171 137

1175 1175 1136 137 1047

a

This is not a category in the official Texas data, but we were able to code the past land uses for some of the properties from information provided in the data base.

programs by examining the data on the characteristics of these properties. We look for common patterns in the characteristics of the properties in these two states. Common patterns in the characteristics of the contaminated brownfield sites of two large states in different parts of the USA may provide important insights about the contaminated brownfield sites that enter VCA programs in order to undergo remediation and be redeveloped. We analyzed the VCA programs in effect at the time the data was collected, not the changes to these programs since then. We also want to determine whether a systematic examination of all properties in these two environmental cleanup programs produces results consistent with the common assumptions about contaminated brownfield properties that we discussed under the literature review heading. Since these two states have distinctly different histories of industrialization and urbanization, we also systematically test for differences in the characteristics of the contaminated properties in these two states. We use a difference of proportions test to determine if property characteristics, such as the past industrial land use of a property, are significantly different in the two states. Do most of the VCA properties in both a Rustbelt state and a Sunbelt state result from past industrial activity? Did past industrial uses cause a greater proportion of these contaminated brownfield sites in the Rustbelt state than in the Sunbelt state? Are these contaminated brownfield sites equally located in the cities of both states? While our data do not allow definitive comparison of contaminated brownfield sites in the Sunbelt and the Rustbelt, we believe that our results for these two states may be of interest to both older industrial regions and recently developing regions in other parts of the world and that they may suggest future research on regional differences. New York and Texas have distinctly different industrial histories that may shed light on some of the common assumptions about brownfield properties. New York was one of the centers of the earliest industrial development in the USA and Texas has grown dramatically in the post World War II period. While NYS’s population grew from 14.8 million in 1950 to just less than 19 million in 2000, Texas’ population grew from 7.7 to 20.9 million over that time period (US Bureau of the Census, 1950 and 2000).

ARTICLE IN PRESS Number of Employees

G.W. Page, R.S. Berger / Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 551–559

2,000,000 1,800,000 1,600,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0

New York Employment

Texas Employment

1950

1960

1970 1980 Year

1990

2000

Fig. 1. State Manufacturing Employment. Sources: US Bureau of the Census 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000.

Population growth is a general indicator of economic activity, but conventional wisdom suggests that industrial activity should be a better indicator of contaminated property. Trends in manufacturing employment in the two states are presented in Fig. 1. In 1950, NYS had 4.8 times more manufacturing employment than Texas. NYS continued to have substantially greater manufacturing employment until well after the federal government enacted stringent environmental regulations of toxic substances in the late 1970s. The steep decline in manufacturing employment in NYS suggests that there may be large numbers of former manufacturing sites that are no longer used in manufacturing and that many of them may be contaminated. This is different from the trend in Texas, which has not experienced a sharp decline in manufacturing employment. Results We start by examining the past land uses that most likely caused the contamination. A detailed look at the past activity of the contaminated brownfield properties in New York and Texas at the two-digit SIC level is presented in Table 2. Several manufacturing sectors: chemical, primary metals, fabricated metals, and printing, have left a widespread legacy of contamination in most places and have done so equally in New York and Texas. It is not surprising that oil and gas extraction has left more contaminated properties in Texas, as have auto repair, railroads, and stone, clay, and glass. In NYS, auto dealers and gas stations as well as personal services have contaminated a significantly higher proportion of properties entering the VCA Program than they have in Texas. The large number of contaminated brownfield properties that had a past land use with SIC 49: electric, gas, and sanitary services, is surprising. It is more than twice as high as the combined number of contaminated properties that had past uses of chemical manufacturing and petroleum refining in the two states. In NYS, 13 of these properties had been manufactured gas establishments in the older cities in the 1800s prior to electrification. These industries left behind contamination from coke wastes. This suggests that some past economic activities, which have left no

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easily identifiable trace on the landscape of today’s cities, have left behind significant contamination. These numbers may also indicate that utilities are more likely to enter into VCP agreements for their brownfield properties than manufacturers. The first common assumption about contaminated brownfield sites that we test is the assumption that past industrial activity was the primary cause of contaminated brownfield sites. Our results offer some support for this assumption. Taking all 1415 contaminated brownfield sites in our two data sets, we do find that a majority of all properties had past industrial land uses. Nevertheless, our results suggest that industrial activities produced a smaller component of the brownfield sites than is commonly assumed. Only 53 percent of the contaminated properties had a past industrial land use and 47 percent of the brownfield sites had a past land use other than industrial. The next common assumption about contaminated brownfield sites is that these sites are most prevalent in older industrial regions. We test this assumption by analyzing both the past and the present land uses of the contaminated brownfield properties in the old industrial Rustbelt state of New York and the more recently industrialized Sunbelt state of Texas. If this common assumption is correct, one might expect to find a higher proportion of industrial past and present land uses in the old industrial state of New York than in the more recently industrialized state of Texas. Contrary to this expectation, contaminated brownfield properties in NYS have a significantly lower proportion of past (47 percent) land uses that are industrial than the brownfield properties in Texas (59 percent) (see Table 3). A more significant difference exists for present use of the property, where twice as many properties in Texas than New York (44 percent versus 22 percent) were being used for industrial purposes when they entered the VCA programs. This may be explained by the fact that Texas has not experienced the steep decline in manufacturing that NYS has experienced. Even more surprising is that in NYS more than half of both the past (52 percent) and present (54 percent) land uses of the contaminated sites were commercial, rather than industrial. Part of the common assumption about older industrial regions is that they have large numbers of contaminated brownfield sites that are now abandoned or vacant. Our results from analyzing the present land use of the properties in our data provide support for this common assumption with a significantly higher proportion of abandoned/derelict sites in the Rustbelt state of New York (21 percent) than in the Sunbelt state of Texas (eight percent). Again, it is important to emphasize that these statistics are only for vacant sites that are being investigated or remediated in a VCP. The next common assumption about brownfield sites that we test is that they are an urban problem because they are mostly found in cities, especially in older industrial cities. Our intent is exploratory; to discover if the different timing and patterns of urbanization in these two regions

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Table 2 Difference of proportions test results for past manufacturing and selected other economic sectorsa for VCA brownfield properties in New York and Texas Variables

# NY

Percentage NY

# TX

Percentage TX

General manufacturing Food & kindred SIC20 Textile mill (SIC22) Apparel (SIC23) Lumber (SIC24) Furniture (SIC25) Paper (SIC26) Printing (SIC27) Chemicals (SIC28) Petroleum refining (SIC29) Rubber & plastics (SIC30) Leather (SIC31) Stone, clay, glass (SIC32) Prim. metals (SIC33) Fab. metals (SIC34) Machinery & computers (SIC35) Electronics (SIC36) Transportation equip (SIC37) Oil and Gas Extraction (SIC 13) Railroad (SIC40) Elec., gas, & sanitary (SIC49) Auto dealers and gas stations (SIC55) Personal services (SIC72)c Auto repair (SIC75)

10 0 2 1 0 3 1 3 6 1 0 1 0 6 7 3 4 2 1 2 21 50 17 1

5.8 0.0 1.2 0.6 0.0 1.8 0.6 1.8 3.5 0.6 0.0 0.6 0.0 3.5 4.1 1.8 2.3 1.2 0.6 1.2 12.3 29.2 9.9 0.6

1 2 0 1 1 0 0 3 7 2 2 0 4 6 5 2 1 0 7 12 16 18 5 8

0.7 1.5 0.0 0.7 0.7 0.0 0.0 2.2 5.1 1.5 1.5 0.0 2.9 4.4 3.6 1.5 0.7 0.0 5.1 8.8 11.7 13.1 3.6 5.8

Z-scoreb

2.41 1.59 1.27 0.16 1.12 1.56 0.90 0.28 0.69 0.78 1.59 0.90 2.25 0.39 0.64 0.49 1.39 1.44 2.48 3.18 0.16 3.39 2.13 2.72

a

US Office of Management and Budget (1999) provides details on the SIC codes. Z-scores of 71.96 indicate that the two data sets are significantly different at the 0.05 significant level using a two-tailed difference of proportion test. c SIC 72 includes several categories of personal services including dry cleaning establishments which are the sources of the contamination of these properties. b

Table 3 Difference of proportions test results for past and presenta land use of VCA brownfield properties in New York and Texas # TX

Percentage TX

Z-scoreb

Variables

# NY

Percentage NY

Past land use Industrial Present land use Industrial Past land use Commercial Present land use Commercial Past land use Residential Present land use Residential Past land use Agriculture Present land use Agriculture Present land use Recreational Present land use Vacant/derelict

81

47.3

81

59.1

2.05

31

22.6

464

44.3

4.84

89

52.0

52

38.0

2.47

75

54.7

471

45.0

2.16

0

0.0

1

0.7

1.12

1

7.0

11

1.1

0.35

0

0.0

2

1.5

1.59

0

0.0

7

7.0

0.96

0

0.0

5

0.5

0.81

29

21.2

82

7.8

5.04

a Present land use refers to the land use at the tie that the property entered the cleanup program, which is before remediation took place. b Z-scores of 71.96 indicate that the two data sets are significantly different at the 0.05 significant level using a two-tailed difference of proportion test.

result in differences in the location of contaminated brownfield sites. NYS has many old compact cities, and Texas has many cities that have grown rapidly in the past few decades in a dispersed auto-dependent form. There are statistically significant differences between the New York and Texas data sets for urban, central city, suburban, and rural locations (see Table 4). Brownfield properties in urban areas and in the central cities of those urban areas are more prevalent in Texas than in NYS. Less than half the contaminated brownfield properties in NYS are in urban areas and less than 30 percent of them are in central cities. Brownfield properties in suburban areas and in rural areas are more prevalent in NYS than in Texas. There are also significant differences in the size of properties in the two states. Table 4 presents an analysis that divides the properties into three categories based on size. The results indicate that there are significantly more small properties in NYS and significantly more medium and large brownfield properties in Texas. The greater number of commercial properties in NYS may be smaller on average than the more prevalent industrial properties in Texas. Discussion Our research approach was to investigate a large number of contaminated brownfield properties. While

ARTICLE IN PRESS G.W. Page, R.S. Berger / Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 551–559 Table 4 Difference of proportions test results for the locationa and size of VCA brownfield properties: New York versus Texas Variable

# NY

Urban 118 Central city 71 Suburban 84 Rural 38 Small (acre & less) 58 Medium (1.1–10 32 acres) Large (10.1 & 27 over acres)

Z-scoreb

Percentage NY

# TX

Percentage TX

49.2 29.6 35.0 15.8 49.6 27.4

1018 757 60 97 215 545

86.6 64.4 5.1 8.3 18.9 48.0

13.30 9.98 13.96 3.64 7.65 4.26

23.1

376

33.1

2.21

a

Location categories use the US Government definitions of the 2000 census (US Bureau of the Census, 2005). b Z-scores of 71.96 indicate that the two data sets are significantly different at the 0.05 significant level using a two-tailed difference of proportions test.

most research on brownfield problems has used a case study approach, we report an analysis of all the 1415 contaminated brownfield properties that entered the New York and Texas VCA programs. The properties entered these environmental cleanup programs in roughly the same time period. We believe that this research approach has some advantages over the case study approach in learning about the diverse causes of the contaminated sites and in testing a number of commonly held assumptions about the contaminated brownfield sites. While the properties in VCA programs are not a random sample of all brownfield properties, these data provide the best information available to empirically test common assumptions about the universe of brownfield sites. We find that many of these commonly held assumptions about brownfield sites that are based on investigations of a few cases are not supported by our analyses of all 1415 contaminated brownfield properties that entered the New York and Texas VCA programs. We think that one of the important results of this research is the detailed information on the relative contribution of different land uses and economic activities that have caused contaminated brownfield properties. The data in Table 2 suggests that the sources of contaminated land are diverse. Economic sectors that are known to use large quantities of toxic chemicals have caused contaminated sites; however, many activities that we do not usually associate with the use of toxic chemicals also have caused large numbers of contaminated sites. We tested the common assumption that a region’s industrial history was the primary factor in causing the contaminated brownfield sites that now exist in that region. We conclude that this assumption is weakly supported. We found that 53 percent of the properties in our combined data for the two states had a past industrial land use; however, almost half of the contaminated brownfield sites

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in these two states’ VCA programs were not directly linked to past industrial activities. Our results suggest that the common assumption that brownfield sites around the world, at least those being remediated and developed, are most prevalent in formerly industrial regions may be incorrect and deserves more comparative research. It is true that a much larger percentage of the VCP sites in New York were vacant when they entered the VCP program than the percentage of vacant sites that entered the program in Texas. Interestingly, data from the older industrial region of Cook County Illinois shows a percentage of vacant sites entering the VCA program (10 percent) that is much closer to that of Texas (8 percent) than of New York (21 percent).1 Clearly there is a significant disparity between the numbers of abandoned sites in the NYS and the Texas data sets. We think that these are significant findings that suggest important topics for future research in regions in the USA and in other parts of the world. Moreover, our data indicates that in Texas, where industrial growth has occurred in recent decades, past industrial land uses caused a significantly larger proportion of the brownfield sites that are being redeveloped than in the old industrial state of New York. We conclude that while older industrial regions like the Rustbelt of the USA have substantial brownfield problems, regions that have grown quickly in recent decades may have contaminated brownfield problems that can be as prevalent as those in the older industrialized regions. Certain older industrial activities, like the manufactured gas plants in cites before electrification, are most common in older industrial regions; however, the increasing use of diverse toxic substances in modern societies in recent decades may be producing substantial contaminated land. Thus 44 percent of the Texas properties were being used for industrial purposes when they entered the VCA program versus only 22 percent for New York. We think this finding may be relevant to regions around the world that are industrializing now or have done so in recent decades. Although our data does not include the date the contamination occurred, our results suggest that spills, leaks, disposal, permitted discharges, and other releases of toxic chemicals may still be creating contaminated land. We suggest that this may be an important area for future research in older industrial regions and in more recently industrializing regions around the world. Our results also indicate the prevalence of contamination related to past commercial land uses. In the old industrial Rustbelt state of New York, more than half of both past and present land uses of the brownfield sites in the data were commercial. While some commercial land uses, such as gasoline service stations and dry cleaning establishments, are well known to have caused contamination, we 1

The Cook County VCA statistic is extrapolated from data in Table 2 of an analysis of 312 brownfield properties in the state of Illinois (WinsonGeidman et al., 2004).

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find that the range of uses that apparently have caused contamination and the extent of their contribution to this problem are much greater than previous research reports. We also think the number of sites with a commercial land use history helps explain the differences in the sizes of the sites in New York versus Texas. Our limited data does add substantially to what is known about the size of brownfield sites, particularly those that are entering state programs that provide incentives to remediate and redevelop brownfields. There are significant variations in terms of size of the properties between New York and Texas. Yet by one measurement the data do generally support one earlier study that found 75 percent of its parcels to be 10 acres or smaller (Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED), 1999), since the comparable number in New York is 77 percent and in Texas 67 percent. The issue of the actual size of these brownfield sites can be quite important from a policy perspective because relying on numbers of sites entering one of these incentive programs can be misleading, and the size of properties is a major factor in the potential reuse of the site. There is a big difference between 50 percent of those sites being an acre or less (New York) versus only 19 percent (Texas). Another important dimension with significant public policy implications is the location of these brownfield sites. The general assumption that brownfield sites are mostly in the central cities of older urban areas does not prove true for those entering the VCA Program in NYS where only 30 percent are in the central cities. A study in Europe found a similar disconnect between brownfield policy and the factual reality. Although a policy in England that seems directed toward land in urban areas sets a target for the percentage of new housing that should be built on previously developed land, research found that in 1995 only 41% of new housing on previously developed properties was in urban areas (Adams and Watkins, 2002). Our results also suggest that many common assumptions about regional differences in the distribution of contaminated brownfield properties may be wrong. There is some logic to expect that the more dispersed pattern of development in regions that have grown rapidly in recent decades, like the USA Sunbelt, would produce a more dispersed pattern of contaminated brownfield sites. Our results show just the opposite with contaminated properties in the VCA programs far more concentrated in the urban areas of Sunbelt Texas than in Rustbelt NYS. We conclude that these environmental cleanup programs are addressing more urban sites in the faster growing state of Texas than the slow-growth state of New York, especially outside the New York City metropolitan area. We suspect that this results from a number of factors, one of which is the older pattern of industrial development in Rustbelt states that was characterized by a larger number of small and widely dispersed industrial facilities, many of which may have originally used water power. More recently industrialized regions, like the USA Sunbelt, have a pattern of a smaller

number of large facilities located near good transportation in or on the periphery of cities. Differences in annexation policies and the physical size of cities in these two regions may also contribute to these findings. This is an important difference that would merit further analysis and comparative empirical research on Rustbelt and Sunbelt areas and on regional differences in other parts of the world where changes in modes of transportation and increased incomes are contributing to a more dispersed pattern of land use. Our research suggests that many common assumptions that have shaped our understanding of contaminated brownfield properties may be inaccurate. In countries around the world, older industrialized regions may have as much contaminated land in commercial areas as they have in old industrial areas. Regions that are recently or currently undergoing rapid economic development may have contaminated land problems that are as prevalent and serious as regions with a long history of past industrial land uses. Brownfield programs and policies targeted toward properties in central cities actually may be used more often for sites in other locations. We believe that more empirical research should be undertaken both in the USA and elsewhere. We hope that future research can help us better understand these issues and to devise better policies that countries in all parts of the world can use to identify, remediate, and redevelop contaminated brownfield properties.

Acknowledgements We want to acknowledge the substantial contribution to this research provided by Amy Fisk, our graduate research assistant, and the comments of this journal’s anonymous reviewers of our manuscript.

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